Mental Health in AAPI Communities

Mental Health in AAPI Communities

What is Civic Engagement?

  “Civic engagement refers to the ways in which citizens participate in the life of a community in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the community’s future.”

Civic engagement means participating in actively creating changes in the community you live in. This can be done by voicing these concerns and creating solutions to various problems. These changes should further improve individual's daily life and help actively voice those concerns in their neighborhoods.

Problem Definition

What is Mental Health?

Mental health has become a growing topic in recent years. Mental Health by definition is “our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices” Many people have realized the importance of taking care of their mental health and why many have actively made an effort to educate themselves and others on this topic. Due to the pandemic, it was more important than ever to focus on our social and physical well-being.

Some benefits of creating a safe mental space for your social well-being are:

• Better connections in relationships

• Improves your physical health

• Feel more connected to your surroundings and community

How does mental health affect the AAPI community?

"Of these, roughly 15% report having a mental illness in the past year, meaning more than 2.9 million Asian Americans experienced mental illness in 2019"

Some reasons for the cause of Mental Health issues in the Asian American Pacific Islanders community:

    1. Model Minority 

The model minority describes that every Asian American is the smartest and brightest in many subjects such as mathematics, science, or even music. This stems from the upbringing of Asian Americans striving to work hard and be on top of everything they achieving towards. This created immense stress on children to be the best of the best.

    2. Generational Trauma

The transfer of trauma from one generation to the next. Many times this trauma is passed down from first-generation immigrants who had a different upbringing than their children born in America. This certain pressure is usually from the stress to do better because the opportunities were better than what the past generation had.

    3. Expectations

There are many expectations that many Asian Americans are faced. For example, being compared to other people your age, being polite and listening to the elderly,  and even your overall appearance. All these pressures put a large stress on many Asian Americans’ mental health.

How can Mental Health Issues be Prevented and Improved?

The idea of mental health in AAPI communities is unheard of. Many Asian Americans were taught at a young age that mental health is what they called people with a psychological disorder. These stigmas make it difficult for many Asian Americans to seek professional help for their mental health. Many do not seek help as it is usually shown as a weakness or illness and not being able to live up to the standards set by their family.

With this in mind, the greatest challenge to reducing mental health issues is to educate Asian Americans about the differences between mental health and psychological health. Understanding the difference will decrease the stigma and make it comfortable for many people in the community to seek help for their mental health. This can be accomplished by creating programs within these communities specifically to spread the values of self care and theory as vital and valid resources. Programs such as Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) are already helping to spread mental health resources in order to help those who need help. AAPA mission is to “advance the mental health and well-being of Asian American communities through research, professional practice, education, and policy.”

Personal

I chose this topic as mental health has always been a topic inside my family that was never spoken about. It was something never mentioned or openly talked about but deeply affected me, especially during the pandemic. I did not know how to address this to my parents and felt scared they would misunderstand this as something else. Instead, I found the resources to help me and have been practicing self care since then. After this experience, I found my mental health to be as important as my physical health. I always made sure to take proper measures in order to maintain a positive outlook and catch myself when I feel my mental health is on a down low. In addition, I started to communicate with my parents about mental health and how important it is.

Gather Evidence

Crystal: In my experience, mental health didn’t exist. It wasn’t diminished or minimized in discussions. There just wasn’t any discussion at all. While wellness has always been an important pillar in Asian communities, with constant wishes for good health and long life, mental health had never been considered an aspect of that.

Katherine:  I feel like mental health is not a focus or a thing in households, especially for our parents. This is because parents don’t understand the idea of it. In the previous country they lived in, it was never a topic that was even talked about. Providing resources would be very important, however, this topic will be very difficult for the older generation to grasp. The idea of mental health is very foreign to immigrant parents or older generations as the general idea of mental health is not understood due to this huge generational gap.

Sources

 https://www.mhanational.org/issues/asian-american-pacific-islander-communities-and-mental-health

 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/asian-american-mental-health#statistics

https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm

https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/why-asian-americans-dont-seek-help-mental-illness

https://www.vibrant.org/supporting-aapi-mental-health/#:~:text=Asian%20American%20Psychological%20Association%20(AAPA,practice%2C%20education%2C%20and%20policy.